


Blind Corners

by bearonthecouch



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Awkward Conversations, First Steps, Gen, Past Child Abuse, Scars, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24135901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: A medical checkup gives Obi-Wan some insight into Anakin's past, and a place to start on the path to the future.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 172





	Blind Corners

Obi-Wan sucked in a breath when he saw the boy with his shirt off, how skinny he truly was, rib bones jutting out underneath the pale flesh. Worse were the scars that littered his body. Many of those no doubt came from podracer crashes and the dangerous work of years in a scrapyard. But his back was covered in white trace-lines, criss-crossing over his spine and curling around his sides.

Anakin obviously noticed Obi-Wan staring, and he reached for his shirt, hesitating only when the medical droid reached out an appendage to stop him. The young boy let his shirt rest on the table again, but he was clearly antsy. Anakin never spoke of his life on Tatooine unless asked a direct question, and he clearly resented even that much.

The medical droid continued its checkup, pressing a cold stethoscope to his back and ordering him to breathe deeply. The droid seemed unaffected by the scars, but Obi-Wan knew that its programming would require it to make note of them. It would be only a minor procedure to remove them, but that would have to be Anakin's choice, and it was certainly not a choice he'd have to make when he'd just arrived at the temple.

Qui-Gon had had scars, too, Obi-Wan remembered. He had never spoken of them.

Anakin coughed when the droid told him to, and the sound was quickly swallowed by the uncomfortable silence of the room. The droid then tapped at his knee with a small hammer, and shone a bright light into his eyes and ears. “He has no bacterial, viral, or fungal infections,” the droid announced, as Anakin redressed. “Aside from being undernourished, he seems perfectly healthy and ready to join his peers.”

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan replied. But he was distracted.

He waited for Anakin to finish lacing his boots and then led the boy away from the medical wing to one of the temple's cafeteria spaces. The Jedi and, especially, the apprentices, took turns working at serving meals and scrubbing dishes from the cramped kitchen behind the buffet line. They could have gotten droids to do it, but the Jedi Masters had deemed such work important for building camraderie and responsibility among the Order. Obi-Wan took a tray and nodded at Anakin, who took one and followed him. Neither of them could ignore the too-loud whispers that followed them as they moved through the line. Obi-Wan put what he hoped was a steadying hand on Anakin's shoulder, and then steered him to a table.

Anakin waited for Obi-Wan to sit down and then he sat down, hesitantly, across from him. “It doesn't hurt anymore,” he said, after a moment.

Obi-Wan's brow furrowed in confusion.“What?”

“The scars you saw. They're old. They don't hurt anymore.”

“I know that, but...” he sighed and shook his head slightly. “It must have hurt a very great deal, at the time.”

Anakin shrugged. He couldn't remember any life before Watto, who occasionally beat him with a length of old wire that whipped across his narrow shoulderblades and down his back. The punishments came after losing races, or when Watto couldn't close a deal with a customer, or if some piece of junk that he needed had gone missing and he could blame Anakin for incompetence or even outright theft. There was always some reason, and it had never occurred to Anakin to resist Watto's orders when he was spitting-and-throwing-things angry. Some slaveholders used neuronic whips to keep their property in line. “It could've been worse,” he said to Obi-Wan.

That only made the man's face contort as though he had tasted something sour.

Anakin watched him warily.

Obi-Wan took a sip of his drink just to give himself a few seconds to collect his thoughts. He set his glass down, and stared into the ripples of juice while trying to center himself in the Force. “You don't have to be afraid of me,” he finally said to Anakin. “I will never hurt you.”

“I know that,” Anakin replied confidently. “You're a Jedi.”

The boy clearly trusted in their institution, though he had lived his entire young life outside of the Republic's reach. “Who taught you about the Jedi?” Obi-Wan asked.

He expected Anakin to say that the stories had come from his mother Shmi, but after the boy had taken a drink from his own glass and met Obi-Wan's eyes, he said, “Old Jira. She's gotta be about a hundred years old, or more, but she lived a bunch of places before Tatooine. She told me all kinds of stories.”

He actually smiled as he talked about her, Obi-Wan noticed. It was the only time he had seen him smile when talking about anything connected to Tatooine. Smiles under any circumstances had been rare since Qui-Gon's funeral.

“Do you still want to be a Jedi?” Obi-Wan asked quietly. He had been keeping Anakin with him mainly because it seemed like the only option. He wouldn't abandon the child that Obi-Wan had instructed him to take care of. But looking after a child fleeing an abusive life of slavery, missing his mother, was perhaps more complicated than Obi-Wan was qualified to handle, and that wasn't even beginning to account for the added complexity of molding that child into something like a Jedi.

“Of course I do,” Anakin replied immediately. He perked up noticably, and shifted in his seat.

Obi-Wan, who had never been asked that question, having been raised in the temple from infancy just like everyone else he knew, held Anakin's gaze and tried to get a read on him without discouraging the first signs of optimism or childlike joy he'd seen from the boy since they'd first been introduced, at Qui-Gon's side. “Why?” he asked calmly.

“Because Jedi _save_ people.”

Obi-Wan nodded. If he had been thinking clearly, he might have seen the child's intensity as a warning bell, might even have guessed that Anakin was already weaving together a plan to save the only person in the vast galaxy he had a close connection with. But as it stood, Anakin's determination just gave Obi-Wan a clear path forward, and he would walk it even through its inevitable tangles and blind corners. He gave a determined nod, and finally paid attention to the food in front of him. He spooned up a mouthful of beans. Only as he felt it settle in his stomach did he realize how hungry he was.

Anakin too tucked into his meal, eating so quickly it could almost be construed as rude. Obi-Wan chose not to interpret it that way. “You can slow down,” he said with a smile. “The food isn't going anywhere.” Anakin just hunched up, with his shoulders around his ears. He began pausing between bites. They ate in silence for several minutes.

Once Anakin had finished, he picked up his plate and looked expectantly at Obi-Wan, who had finished most but not all of the food on his own plate. But he nodded at Anakin, and carried his plate to the belt that would take it to the kitchens to be washed. Anakin put his plate behind Obi-Wan's, and he was squirming a little once more.

“Come on,” Obi-Wan told the young boy. “Let's go.”

“Where are we going?”

The truth was that there was no clear consensus on where to start when it came to training a Jedi as old as Anakin Skywalker. His peers had been using training sabers for years already, but wielding a lightsaber was not what made a Jedi. It was, however, the aspect of being a Jedi that might most attract a nine-year-old boy, so Obi-Wan brought them to the training chambers on the apprentice levels. At Obi-Wan's nod, Anakin took one of the practice sabers in his hand. He clutched the hilt in an uncertain two-handed grip, and he looked up at Obi-Wan.

“Widen your stance a bit,” the man said. “Like this.” He demonstrated, and gave Anakin a reassuring smile as he followed along. “Now relax your grip, just a bit. You need to be able to move with the weapon. It needs to be a part of you.”

He knew Anakin wouldn't truly understand what that meant until long after his first practice session, but that didn't make it any less true. Obi-Wan picked up a practice saber and began running through a few of the forms, almost meditatively. When he looked back at Anakin, the boy was just staring at him.

“Wow!” he said, with obvious awe on his face.

“Try to block,” Obi-Wan said. “Okay? Hold your blade like this.”

He worked patiently with the young boy for nearly an hour, until Anakin had a block that might protect him for at least a few moments in a sparring session with the other children his age. Of course, those children knew how to use the Force to grant themselves enhanced speed and strength and extrasensory perception.

The more Obi-Wan thought about it, the more he was forced to confront just how much Anakin didn't know. Where in the hell was he supposed to start?

“Are you okay, Master Obi-Wan?”

“What? Yeah, I'm... fine,” he trailed off. Anakin's piercing blue eyes were boring into him. Only the look of worry and childlike compassion on his face made the stare comforting rather than unsettling. Maybe Obi-Wan could just start with what Qui-Gon had done with him through their first few months together. He couldn't think of a better role model to look up to. “I suppose I'm just a bit... overwhelmed.”

“Oh.” Anakin sat down, training saber still in his right hand, and curled his left arm around his knees. “Me too,” he said.

Obi-Wan sat down beside him and put his hand atop Anakin's. The little boy looked up at him, a confused frown on his face and wide eyes that spoke of fear.

“Do you think we can get through it together?” Obi-Wan asked.

Anakin smiled, and nodded.


End file.
